The people behind ITV's Show Me the Funny – a sort of X Factor for comics – have, as part of the prize for those who reached last month's final, launched a short UK tour for its winner, Patrick Monahan, and the two runners-up, Tiffany Stevenson and Dan Mitchell. It may be that this show, which I saw at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, suffered from being filmed for the DVD (to be released in November) but by golly was it long, boring and, for the most part, laughter-free.
First up was Mitchell, a young Welshman who failed to raise much more than an occasional smile with his quotidian observational material about being a shambling bloke who doesn't have much success with women. His 20 minutes seemed so much longer.
Next came Stevenson, a talented comic who has been on the club and Fringe circuit for a few years and whom many will have thought unlucky not to win the £100,000 SMTF prize and the DVD release for which this performance was being filmed.
His 90 minutes was interminable – not helped by constant repetition of asides when he should have been getting on with telling jokes
She came on stage raring to go, doing a very strong and well-received 20 minutes from her hour-long Edinburgh set, and she raised the comedy temperature in the room immediately. Subtle jokes about sex, boyfriends and being a working-class girl at heart played well with an audience whom she used well as foils for her jokes.
The main attraction, I'm sad to report, was a huge let-down. Monahan, who was brought up in Middlesbrough of Irish-Iranian parents, is a warm and engaging performer who normally riffs to great effect with his audiences, and who was a popular winner of the ITV show within the industry. But in this theatre space his interaction with the audience simply didn't come off, while much of his material was weak or appeared to have been written on the way there. His 90 minutes was interminable – not helped by constant repetition of asides when he should have been getting on with telling jokes, and “I'll just share this with you before I go” (after which he shared little of import) said many times before he actually did.
Two segments where he brought members of the audience on stage to show us how teenagers salute each other or how blokes should behave in nightclubs seemed to go on for ever and delivered few laughs. Monahan usually has a sure touch with playing off his fans and using his unusual ethnic background to produce some clever and insightful material, but here the material just palled because his act felt thrown together.
I don't know quite how Show Me the Funny (presented by comic Jason Manford) has managed it, but it appears to have sucked out Patrick Monahan's undoubted talent, and without Tiffany Stevenson's refreshing and spot-on contribution this evening would have been a washout.
- Show Me the Funny Live is touring until 30 September
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